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VoiceOver App Smackdown 2016

Seminars@Hadley


Presented byAlan Maynard, Douglas Walker, Ian [Schadrick] and Lynn [Sorge]

March 2, 2016

You are listening to seminars at Hadley. This seminar is Voiceover App Smackdown 2016, presented by Alan Maynard, Douglas Walker, Ian [Schadrick] and Lynn [Sorge], moderated by Larry [Muffett].

Larry MuffettWelcome to seminars at Hadley. My name is Larry Muffett. I'm a member of Hadley seminars team, and I also work in curricular affairs. Today's seminar topic is Voiceover App Smackdown 2016. Our presenters today are members of the technology teachers group at Hadley. Alan Maynard, Douglas Walker, Ian Schadrick and Lynn Sorge. Today, this group of tech experts are gonna share some of their favorite voiceover apps with you. Let me welcome the panel and get underway, and I believe Alan Maynard will be the first up today. Alan, please take it away.

Alan Maynard

©2016 Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired of 33

Thank you Larry. I'll be talking about four apps, and I'll get right off just quickly, my name's Alan Maynard and I work the help desk here at Hadley. The first app that I'm going to speak about is called HeyTell. Just like it sounds. It's made by a company called Voxilate, and it is a free app. It is a cross between a walkie talkie and texting. It connects to the people in your contacts list, and if you send them, well it allows you to send email or a text to a person, if you want to ask them if you want to communicate. If they do accept your invitation, you can press a button and start speaking. It's not like talking on a telephone, or a walkie talkie, but once you release the button, your message is sent. It's kind of like back and forth that way, and this does work perfectly with voiceover.

The next app is simply called a talking scientific calculator. It was created by a gentleman named Adam Croser. This app is $4. 99. There's not a whole lot I can say about it. It's just like I said, it's a talking scientific calculator. It is easy to use, and it does have its own voices, but if you don't like those voices, you can record your own name to work with the calculator. There is a free version. It's not clear if the free version is stripped down, so you don't have the full functionality, or if it's one you get for 30 days and then you can keep using it, only if you pay the $4. 99. This is another app that works with voiceover, but this app also has a high contrast, if you're low vision.

The next app is called 5-0 Radio Probe Police Scanner, and that's by a company called Smartest Apps LLC. This app costs $2. 99. It's like if you hear sirens approaching, you can quickly activate your iPhone and use the app, so


you can listen in to the different live feeds. You can hear feeds from fire, emergency, air traffic, railroad, police and maybe some more. It does have over 35,000 live feeds. This app also has a free version. It seems like this free version is just that. You probably don't have access to all the feeds, because it is a free version, but at least you can try it out before you pay the amount to get the full 35,000 feeds.

The last app that I'm going to talk about is a game called Choice of the Dragon, and that is made by a company simply called Choice of Games LLC. I don't remember exactly how much it costs, but I'm guessing it's probably between three and five dollars, based on the amount of choices that your dragon can have. The stories you can create are all based on the choices you make. You can play it a number of times, choosing different things to create a different story. For example, in the choices, before you get started on a story, you are the dragon, and you choose your dragon's gender, its color and the number of limbs, between four and eight, and the dragon's name. It gives you a couple of choices, but if you don't like those dragon names, you could enter your own name. Now, you probably don't want to use your personal name. I don't think a dragon named Alan would be too scary, but you can be creative and do your own dragon name.

Those are the four apps, and I believe Douglas has a few more to talk about, so I'm going to switch the microphone and give it to Douglas.


Larry MuffettAlan, this is Larry. I'm gonna jump in here. Could you give the names of those? We've got a request for the spelling of the first app, and then Sharon [Hamilton] wanted to know what was the scanner app that you mentioned, what was the name of that one? Could you give us those two again before Douglas gets started?

AlanSure. The first one was HeyTell, and that was by a company called Voxilate. That was a free app. The next one was just talking scientific calculator. The third app was called 5-0 Radio Pro Police Scanner. That was by a company called Smartest Apps LLC. If you have a question, you can give me a call here at Hadley, or send an email to the help desk.

Audience MemberAlan, how do you tell the police scanner, you said there were all these thousands of feeds. Do you have to tell it specific locations that you would like to be sort of at the top of your list?

AlanI'm not totally sure, because I haven't had a chance to try the app fully. It sounds like that would be the way it works. Select which feed you want, based on railroad, or fire, emergency, or whatever. Seems like it should be that simple, especially if it's on our seminar today, which is VoiceOver Smackdown, so it would probably be the best way to do that.


ChristinaHi, this is Christina. If it's the same app, you have to put in, they have codes for each location for the police scanner. Each county has a code, and there's a list.

SharonThis is Sharon. I use Scanner Deluxe, which is a lot easier than 5-0, and you localize it, and you can add certain places like your locality to your favorites. It goes within a certain number of miles and stuff, but it's great.

Douglas WalkerThis is Douglas, and I don't know Alan. I think that a dragon named Alan might terrify me, answering the help desk there. Anyway, I love the fact that you're giving out games too. That's a lot of fun, because anyone that knows me knows that I tend to hang onto all productivity apps. Of course, there's not gonna be any surprises for that today, because I'm gonna be sharing some apps that can hopefully help to simplify some of those most common things that we do on our i-device. I am a huge user of all of the native apps, or the apps that are built right into our i-devices, such as apps like our calendar app, or even our voice memos app. However, I am always looking for apps that don't necessarily take the place of these apps, but will sync with them for one, or even be a nice companion to these native apps. Maybe in some cases, you will want to switch to them, because they tend to be a little easier to use, and I like the fact that even if they're easier to use,


they also sync with our other apps, so we don't lose information between our apps there.

The first couple of apps that I'm gonna be sharing today sort of fit into this category. This first app really works well with our calendar, and this app is called VO calendar. The VO actually stands for voiceover, so we know for sure that this app of course is going to work really well with voiceover. This is kind of an expensive app, and it's gonna cost us $9. 99 in the App Store. If you're already comfortable using your calendar app that's built into your device, then you might want to stick with that. However, if you're looking for something that's really really simple to use, and is really streamlined, and also syncs with your Apple calendar, then this is really the app for you.

A couple of things that I really like about VO calendar is first and foremost its simplicity. When you first open it, or when you open it, all you're given is a week view. Then voiceover announces all of the days in the current week that you're going to have calendar events posted for. When you open it, it might say something like, the week of March 2nd, you have four events. On Monday, Thursday and Friday. That's great. Then, all you have to do is just kinda flick, right-flick through the week, and voiceover is going to read any of your events as you land on any of the days that you have events for. For me, that's really really nice. Really handy.

It's also really easy to add new events to VO calendar. If you want to add an event to Friday of the week, all we do is we flick to Friday, and then we just single-finger double-


tap on Friday, and we're given a choice of adding either a new calendar event, or we have the option of adding a voice memo to the calendar. It's kind of cool, because we're prompted through the process of adding an event or a voice memo, instead of having to right-flick through all of the attributes on one long screen. If you're having difficulties with using the built-in calendar, and you just want something really simple, and really streamlined, then the VO calendar app really might be a nice alternative for you.

While I'm thinking about it, it probably would be great if we could type as we're finishing our apps, each one of us finish, we can just type them into the text chat area, so people can check them out there as well. All of these apps that we're going to be talking about are also gonna be archived with our seminar, after it's archived too. You'll be able to find a list of those there as well.

My second app for today is the Just Press Record app. Again, this is an app. This one has kind of replaced my voice memos app that's built onto the iPhone, and I really like the Just Press Record app. It really is just so easy to use, and because it syncs with my iCloud drive, it's really great. Then, I know that any voice recordings I make on my iPhone, or this is really cool, I can make recordings right on my Apple watch. They're gonna be available on my iPhone, my Macbook, or my iPad, and you can find them even in your iCloud account on your Windows-based computer as well. This app is gonna cost $2. 99, so if


you're happy with your voice memos app, then you might just stick with it. However, I am all about having access to all of my recordings across all of my devices here.

Again, this app is really designed to work well with voiceover, because we're actually getting prompts for how to use it, when we first open it. When we open it, voiceover tells us that when we use a two-finger double tap, that we can start and stop all of our recordings. When we hear hints like this, that are actually built into an app, we really do know for sure that the app developer has really worked hard to make their app accessible, and that's really nice. Just press record is a really high quality, really simple to use voice recorder app. I really do recommend that. You might want to check that one out.

My next app is called [Crocus] Contact, and again I'll type all this in the text chat area in just a bit, but it's Crocus Contact. One thing that's not necessarily the easiest thing to do on our i-device is to add a contact using our contacts app. Now, you do have an iFocus video called adding a new contact, that gives step by step directions for how to add a contact. However, still, adding a new contact is still just not the easiest thing to do. We've been hoping, hopefully we can still keep our hopes up, right? We're hoping that Apple will add the ability to add contacts by using Siri, because we keep hearing that rumor out there, but it hasn't happened yet.

This is where the Crocus Contact app might come in handy for us. This app is gonna cost us 99 cents. It's


really not that expensive, and it might make it worth just downloading it and checking it out, to see if it's helpful for you. Now, Crocus Contact will not give us the ability to add all of our contacts' information. We'll only be able to add our contact's first and last name, and maybe the name of a business that they work for, and of course our contact's phone number. However, really for most of our contacts, this really is about all the information that we're gonna need. When we open our Crocus Contact app, this app is really nice because it's self-voicing. It doesn't use voiceover as it goes through, and we're gonna be prompted to add all of these attributes.

First it's going to ask us for our contact's first name, and of course we'll just speak it out loud. Then, we'll be asked for the last name, and we speak that. Then, we'll be asked for the business. Now, it does give us the choice to say no, if there's no business associated with this contact. Of course, the last thing that we'll be asked is the phone number for our contact, and we can speak it in there. Once we do speak our phone number, we've been told that our contact has been added, and our app actually says ciao, and the app closes itself, which is kind of cool. Then, we're right back on our phone's desktop, and our contact has been added to our contacts app, which is really cool. Like I said, Crocus Contact is really gonna add only the most basic information for a contact, but for me, this is all I need most of the time. It's a really handy app to have.


I had a couple more apps, but it looks like I'm only going to have time for one more, so how about we go ahead and talk about, look down my list, Be My Eyes app. Now, the Be My Eyes app has really gotten some really great media attention lately, and I really do love it when this happens, because it really helps to make app developers, and just people in general, more aware of the need to make apps more accessible for us. The Be My Eyes app is a free app, and we're all about some free stuff, right? The Be My Eyes app allows us to get visual assistance from a sighted person, and we actually can do this through the camera that's built into our i-device. There are other apps out there that give us the ability to take pictures of an item, and the app's gonna tell us what our item is. Sort of like TapTapSee. We take a picture of it, and it can sort of tell us whether it's a Coke or maybe a Dr. Pepper or Sprite. Tell us the difference.

However, Be My Eyes really does take it a step further than that. Maybe if we're in a situation where we're alone, and maybe we don't know the correct place to plug a cable in on our TV, or maybe on our computer. We can't tell where to plug it in. We could use the Be My Eyes app to get the visual assistance that we need. When we first launch the Be My Eyes app, we need to register as a user. We have two buttons, and we can either register as a sighted helper, or we can register as a blind user. When you register, you'll have to provide your name, your email address, and then you'll have to create a password. Of course, you're gonna be prompted to allow the app to


have access to your microphone and your camera, and then you're good to go. From now on, every time you open the Be My Eyes app, you'll have a button in the center of your screen that says connect to first available helper. If you activate that button, you'll be connected then to a random user that has signed up to be a helper.

This is not like a Facetime call, because your helper's not going to be able to see you. It's actually accessing the back camera on your phone. Of course, unless for some reason you want them to, and you kinda turn your phone around so that the camera faces you, but really in theory it's designed to be completely anonymous. You then have the ability just to talk to your helper, and they can sort of help you through whatever situation, or whatever difficulties you might be having problems with. Be My Eyes really does seem to have limitless possibilities if you need assistance. If you use it correctly, I can tell you it really could be a huge help for you. Okay. I think I've pretty much run out of my time. I'll go ahead and just hand the microphone over, and I think that Ian Schadrick is up next, so I'll go ahead and hand the microphone over.

Ian SchadrickAlright, thank you Douglas. I would just preface my apps today with much of Douglas' initial comments relative to productivity, that tends to be kind of where my vein tends to be as well. As a result, that's most of what we're going to talk about today, is productivity apps. A couple of


these, again, are really more to supplement or to augment in some cases I guess some of the native apps, because I too try to use the majority of the native apps.

The first of those that I want to talk about was another recording app. A little bit different. It's called Voice Recorder DX2, with noise reduction. It's a really long name for one recorder app. However, it's nice because it does have the built-in noise reduction that is more advanced than what you typically find on the recorders. It's got some pre-record options. It does a microphone boost that's automatic, when it needs to. That's nice, it can kind of pick up what's going on, and boost the microphone if it needs it. You have an unlimited recording time. You can record in the background. Additionally, you can transfer your files to things like Dropbox, or Box, or various other platforms for saving your files. The other nice aspect is that it records automatically as an MP3, so you don't have to convert the files. For some recorders, that's not necessarily the case. It is fully accessible.

The only thing that's not fully accessible is it does give you visually some different themes or skins for the background of the recorder. If you do have residual vision and you care about that on your recorder, then that aspect is not accessible in terms of actually knowing which one you land on. The process to change them is accessible, but again, knowing which one you land on to change is not. It does have the ability to as I said, record in the background. That's really nice. It can use a wifi download to download your files, or convert them to another file


format. Again, it's just another really nice recording option, given its advanced noise reduction options. Especially if you're in an office setting, or a lecture, or something like that, it's just another really nice option for that.

Another app that is a newer app that I've come across that is a novel idea is called Notarize. The concept behind Notarize, it gives you the option to sign up for an account, and you can use anything from your email, to a file that you scan, to something that you already have saved on your phone or iPad. When you create your account, you can open the app, select the given file from your format. As an example, let's say it's an email attachment. You would just say, open in Notarize. It will then have you fill in your information, so it's your name, address, date of birth, et cetera. Just like you would if you were getting something notarized typically. It then is going to connect you with a notary, who will witness the signing of the document via the app. From there, they then notarize your document for you.

The one caveat there is that it is a paid service. The notarization itself is paid. The app is free. That's kind of the one downside. It's typically from what I'm finding, about 25 dollars per notarization, and while that may seem like a lot, if you're in a situation where you get free notarization, say at your bank, the caveat might be depending on what the time you need a turnaround of something notarized, or the expense to get to your bank.


Any number of variables that you may need something quicker. It's just an option for if you really need something notarized right away. It's a really neat option for that.

The next app that I wanted to talk about briefly is called Box. Essentially, if you're familiar with Dropbox, and its storage capabilities, Box is essentially its alternate competitor for file and things like picture storage, all of those different file formats. The one nice part with Box that's a little bit different than Dropbox is just the initial storage size that it gives you. It gives you an initial ten gigabytes before it charges you, whereas Dropbox is two gigabytes. As an example, I have several Dropbox accounts, because I never upgrade my Dropbox, simply based on the ability to add in different emails and have separate accounts.

Once I found Box, I could actually solidify that and move more items into one large account, and have simply five times the storage. In terms of integration, it actually integrates very much the same way. You can save any number of recordings, or files, things of that nature, directly into the app, just like you would with Dropbox. It will pop up when you ask to save an item. You are seeing more integration of Box into other apps, as with the recorder that I mentioned earlier. The biggest difference is that Box was originally designed as a business to business platform, whereas Dropbox was much more personalized. You're also starting to see some social media integration as well with Box.


The last couple of apps. The next to last one that I had is Outlook, and if you're already an Outlook user for Windows, you're gonna be very familiar with the concepts behind the Outlook app, because essentially it takes your entire Outlook software that you would have on your Windows PC, and moves that over into the app, so that you have your mail, your calendar. It allows you to access files. You have people or what would be considered contacts, and then your settings. The nice part is, is it pretty much picks up directly where you leave off with your email and things of that nature, or your calendar. All of those things are synced, just as though they are with using your Windows machine.

If you're a heavy Outlook user, say for work, you could put that on your phone and do that as well. There are various options there. The biggest challenge I would say, if there is one, with the Outlook app as a whole, is the calendar view. Not that the calendar's not accessible, because that is an issue sometimes with the current Windows version of Outlook, but the layout for instance, where it's going to give you beyond your current date can be a little bit confusing. You kind of wanna look at that and decide what view works best for you, from an efficiency standpoint, but in terms of having access to information that you would glean from your Outlook calendar, or your contacts, et cetera, it's a really nice way to kind of merge the two between your iOS and your Windows machines.


The last app that I have is an app called Line Two. What Line Two does is it gives you an option to contact VoIP or a voiceover internet phones to another level, and essentially what it does is it works very similar to Google Voice. If you're familiar with that, the biggest difference is that you have a lot more advance features. It gives you a second phone number on your i-device, and it gives you full access to either Wi-Fi or 3G, 4G, LTE calling, as well as a separate voicemail inbox, the ability to sync contacts, so you can use the same contacts that you would use for your iOS, into then your Line Two.

If you have the app turned off, then that line won't ring. If you have the app loaded in the background, then that app will ring. Say you're on a call, it gives you the option to pick up that other line. Again, the other nice thing is it does give you a dedicated number, so you don't have to necessarily have two phones. Again, the app is free. The service is not. The service has a 30-day free trial, but then gives you the option of either a 15 dollar a month, or there's a 19. 95 in-app purchase, if you were to decide not to subscribe, so that you could do it monthly. The nice part with this too is again, there's no contract to it, as opposed to you're having to have a separate phone. From a business perspective, or someone just needing a second line for some other reason, it's just a nice alternative to some of the other VoIP systems, because it does give you much more advanced features than some of your more free options.

I will now turn things over to Lynn.


Audience MemberIan, does that Outlook app transfer notes? I'm a heavy Outlook user, and it seems like that changed recently, and the notes no longer sync across iTunes to your phone. I was just curious if that works through the Outlook app, because that's a feature I used a lot, where I would take a note on my phone with Siri, and then I'd sync my phone and have the information on the computer, and so I'm searching for something to try to get that functionality back.

IanI know that there were some issues for a while, where if you didn't go in and check notes as a setting for iCloud, then it wouldn't transfer back over. In fact, I've had some of those myself. I do know that the Outlook app does have a files section. I think that you'd be able to pull those over into files, and access them that way.

LarryLynn, whenever you're ready, go ahead and start the next segment. I'll remind everyone that we will definitely have a question and answer period at the end.

Lynn SorgeGreetings, everyone. It's always kind of interesting to do these, and I think oh, I'm sitting here listening to all of my colleagues and friends, and think what about this? What


about that? We also did one of these last year, and so if you think hmm, I wonder what else they might have talked about? Accessing the archived seminars can be really helpful, and there was one last year with other apps that we discussed. My apps are not gonna be as utility and productivity oriented as the others, but maybe that's a good thing to have a mix. I'm also going to throw a monkey wrench into what I told Douglas I was going to do, because I forgot one that is absolutely at the top of my favorites list, and that is Pandora.

It's a music app, and probably many of you already know it. If you register for it, you can put it on your computer and your iPhone. I'm using a Windows computer, so it doesn't necessarily have to be Mac, and then iPhone. However, the accessibility with it on the iPhone is just amazing. I must admit that I spent a lot of time over Christmas break listening to Pandora, and you can just have it play music in the background. You have to set it up, but what you do is there are categories. Let's say you like hip hop, jazz, folk. You could set up a station that would play one of those categories, or you can even search for a name. If Douglas Walker had made a CD, I could search and see if he was available in there, and if so, I could say I would like to set up a Douglas Walker radio station. I have several. I have one named Anne Hills, she's a folk singer artist that I like. David Ross, and I also have more generics. Instrumental Christmas. Cambridge singer Christmas. Old-fashioned Christmas. Things like that.


Then, the songs will start to play, and you have several options on your iPhone, near the bottom of the screen. It's sort of like thumbs up, thumbs down. I like it, that just says when I load this station and start to play it, if whoever the little gremlins are, they're actually people who go through all the songs and things, they'll say oh, well this kind of would match that. We'll put that on the playlist. However, if there's a song you think oh, that's horrible. I don't ever want to hear one by that artist, or of that quality again. You say thumbs down, or don't like it, and it will quit playing it immediately, and comes to the next one on the playlist. You can also think, well that's an okay song, but I really don't want to hear it right now. You can then hit the skip button, and it skips right away. When you bring up Pandora, it calls to the last station you were listening to that you set up, but you can set up a list. You just slide your finger down the screen on the iPhone, and it will tell you Bing Crosby, some rock group I wouldn't know, the Beatles, things like that. Then you tap on it, and it will play that set of playlists. It's just an amazing thing.

You can get a free version, but the trick with that is you have to put up with the ads. You can pay I think it's five or six dollars a month. To me, I just absolutely love it, and another thing it will do is you can, if you're hearing a song and you think, wow what is that? You can just tap a certain place on your screen, or slide to it, and it will give you the artist, the song name, the album that it's from. This is all very accessible with voiceover. I find it a little


more cumbersome on my Windows computer. There are key commands for it, but on the iPhone it's just amazing. That's something I just keep in the background if I'm doing something that doesn't take a lot of really detailed listening for exact spelling and things like that.

The next app that I like is called Ordet. This is because I'm a word game buff. Last year, I talked to you about Touch Target, which is another word game. I like this one because it uses seven random letters. If you are a word game buff, and you play Scrabble, in your regular old hard copy game with a Scrabble board and all that, although you can get it for the phone, you have seven letters in your rack at all times, until near the end of the game. There's just random letters that you draw or you get, and then you have to make up words with them. This game is make as many words as you can. If you use all seven letters, that's a really nice high set of points.

Every button is accessible with voiceover. Again, I think it might be about a dollar. You can get a free version, but you don't get as many levels of play. If you think I can't get these letters out of my mind in the order they are, you just shake your phone to shuffle, and then it puts them in a new order for you. It's one of those that I like to play if I'm sitting waiting for paratransit, or sitting in a doctor's office, or a dentist's or something. It's really cool, and if you have a headset, then you're not bothering anybody, although now and then, I was in PT for a while for something, and I think the people that were waiting were having as much


fun listening to it and chiming in, as I was doing it. It's called Ordet.

Next one is very basic. Light Detector. If you don't have one, it certainly is handy. Until I got my iPhone, I could've purchased a pricey one, but my mother had given me a Christmas mug. She was very vocal and said it only cost five dollars. Every time it sees a light, it plays this little Jingle Bells thing. If you have no light probe, it will work to walk around your house waving it above your head, and if it starts to play Jingle Bells, you know that there is a light somewhere up there that's on. However, this certainly is a lot better and it was free. It goes by pitch, so that if the closer you get to a light, or the stronger the light, it'll go up higher in pitch. As you go away from a light, it will get lower in pitch. If you're trying to figure out which of three lights in a room is on, if you go by the higher the pitch is, you'll get to the right light.

Now you have to hold your iPhone so that the camera in the back is available, because that's what is used. If you put your finger over the camera in the back, you won't get anything. It's totally ineffective. It's so handy because no matter where you are, if you're in a hotel room, I'm not going to carry my Jingle Bells mug everywhere I go, but I just pump up my iPhone and I think ooh, did I turn that light off at night, you know? It's up in the ceiling, so you just take this little light probe, and it goes like that, and if it


goes like that you know there's a light on. It's very handy, and it's as easy to use as you can get.

The next one is Westminster Chimes. Again you can get a freebie version, or a full version for about a dollar. A dollar to me for this is just great. They call it light if you get the free version. Like Ordet light, or Westminster Chimes light. It doesn't do all the same things. If the app is off, it won't play. What I like about it is, it's truly a good sound. Just amazing. It sounds like there's this big old Westminster clock, and I think there's five choices of melodic chimes that you can use, and you can set it to play during the day, or certain hours, or you can choose if you want Westminster one day, and then you want Wellington the next day, and that kind of thing, you can choose it. Again, all the buttons work. It's very handy.

My next one is called Amazing Slowdowner. This is because, again, the music part of me speaking up. You can speed up or slow down a song, if you're trying to learn it by ear. Let's say there's just a little section and you can't get the chords. It goes by too quickly. You can slow it down, but it doesn't change the pitch. With some of the things you see, and with our recorders or this or that, where you can slow things down, it also changes the pitch. This doesn't. It just slows it down or speeds it up, and you can mark, let's say there's only one line of a song, although it's been said many times, many ways, and you can't get those chords.


You can mark the beginning to the end, like A to B, and then it'll just play it for you, and you can work through it, and find the right chords hopefully, if you can hear what it is. Again, there's a free version for this, but the catch is that it will only go through the first quarter of the song. If the part you want to hear is about three-quarters of the way through the song, it won't find it. This is a little more pricey, but if you are one who likes to learn a lot of stuff by ear, and there are certain chord passages and you just would like to sort of freeze two or three of those bits of a phrase, it's 15 dollars the last I checked. To me, that's really worth it.

I am almost done, I promise, I'm not going to talk about this really except to say that spring training for baseball fans, being where I am, I am a Cubs fan. An avid Cubs fan, and it starts soon, I think tomorrow afternoon is the first game. There is an app called At Bat, and I think that was in my last year's chat at the seminar, but again, I was in Florida on vacation last year, at a very exciting part of the Cubs season, and I could just very easily, I had the Cubs as my favorite team, and I could hit play, and stop. It will play the whole game with the announcer you like. That's very cool.

I think we have enough time that you all might add your two cents about an app, or ask a question. Before I let go of the key, I have a question for Douglas. When you are using that Crocus Contact thing, how good is it with


names? I looked at our location list earlier, and the last name is [Tistelly] from one of our participants here. Now, it could be Tast, Test, Tist. Tistelly. Do you have to really verbally say the vowel sounds, or do they give you a way that you can say, T as in tango? Anyway, thank you all for listening to all my chatter, and we've got a little time to do a lot more good stuff.

DouglasHey Lynn, this is Douglas. Just like any other dictation feature that we have or that we use, this is going to be very similar. This to me is just a quick way to get a contact in. It might say that name spaghetti, and you might have to go change it later, but for me, if I'm on the go, this is just a fast way to get a contact in, and get the phone number in. That's the main thing.

I've done tons of videos on all the different features and stuff. I've done the video on adding a contact, but this still comes up. I still get emails and calls from people wanting to know, isn't there an easier way? For basic names, and for stuff like that, this may be your solution, but you may have to go in and edit the name, if it's something that is not in the dictionary, or that is not just a common name. Anyway, I hope that helps.

LarryAlright, we're going to turn loose the microphone now. If you want to do show and tell, and tell us about some voiceover apps that you're particularly happy with, please do that, or if you have questions for the panel, certainly do


that. We've got adequate time to take some questions, so I'm gonna unleash the microphone, and go ahead and queue up, and let's see.

AveryHello there, Larry. This is Avery. I have a couple apps that might be interesting. One of them is a game app which is called Dice Whirl, for those individuals who like dice games like Yahtzee, farkle, you got 24, three, whatever. It's a really good dice game, and you can play it with friends, and just with random players from all over.

Another app that I have is called VM Alert. What this app does, if you are in a hotel room by yourself at night, you set it up on your iPhone, and point it toward the door. If there's any motion in your room, it goes off. If you're in the area by yourself, and you want to know if someone's coming up on you, you just lay your iPhone to the side and set it up, and the alarm is on. Anybody that moves around, it'll let you know. Again, that's called VM Alert.

CathyThis is Cathy [Blackburn]. I have been enjoying the Facebook app, but I have not seen the picture descriptions that they've been hyping a lot. I do have the most current version. I do like the new little reaction things that have shown up in IMs and those.

Audience Member


I use an app called Chime. It's a real simple app, but it's just nice to hear on the hour, it beeps. I can go to church and put the mute on, and it'll still buzz because I know it'll vibrate on silent. It's just a real simple app. Again, I don't always have my phone on me, and if I have the phone on the other side of the house I can hear that beep go off. It just gives me an indication of what time it is.

ChristinaThis is Christina. I have so many. The two that I want to talk about, the first one is Square Cash, where you can set it up, and you have to put in your bank information, like your routing number and your check number, or you can put in your debit card. You can share money with people, so you don't even have to sit and write out a check. You can just, they'll be in your contacts if they're signed up, and you just send them the money, and it is deposited into their account.

The other one is GrubHub, which is really good, where you can order fast food, not fast food but from restaurants in your area. That's really accessible.

LarryI'll throw this one out. William says, is there a gesture to turn voiceover on and off? Perhaps Douglas on that one?

DouglasThere's not a gesture to turn voiceover on and off, but the great thing that they added to Siri recently was the ability to turn voiceover on and off by using Siri. You can just


hold down the home button until you hear the Siri beep, and say turn off voiceover. The only other way, if you wanted to set your triple-click home feature, your home button feature to turn voiceover off, you can do that as well, under your settings. You can triple-tap your home button to turn voiceover on and off there. We do have an iFocus video that talks about the settings, all the accessibility settings, and it talks about that one there. The triple-click home on your home button, and I tell ya, for me, the ability to use Siri to turn it on and off is a big deal.

SharonThis is Sharon. I live in Chicago, and one of the apps that I use absolutely all the time when I'm riding public transportation is our CTA bus tracker. With this one, you can [inaudible 53:56] it's probably a different name, but you can select the bus number that you're looking for, the route number, the direction that you're travelling, and then the stop that you want. You can tell when that bus is going to be there. It has been fabulous. I remember one time it stopped working at one point, when there was an update, and I was out with a friend, and she was so upset that we had to stand out in the rain and wait for the bus, and we couldn't just tell when it was gonna be there, but it's a fabulous app, and it's very easy to use.

Lynn


I wish I had that in my area. It just sounds so nifty. I just want to speak and give a shoutout to our iFocus videos that Douglas does for us. He's a good friend of mine, and a superb teacher. These videos are astounding. Absolutely astounding. You can sit there and how every bit of this or that, it's step by step, and whatever it tells you it's going to teach you, he teaches you, with examples and hearing things. There are lots of them. As he said, there's one on setting up a contact. Anything you can imagine. The thing is, he keeps adding more and more of them, as Apple keeps adding more and more. Make sure you look at our YouTube channel, or our iFocus videos, because they are worth every minute of your time. You can either listen to them, or download them to an MP3 player.

IanDouglas, perhaps you can use that Square Cash app to transfer some money into Lynn's account now.

DouglasThank you Lynn, that was a really nice plug from you there. I so much enjoy doing the iFocus videos, and I try to add four a quarter, sometimes five or six every quarter, along with the iFocus seminars that we have. That's what Larry and I were kind of joking about, is we had our iFocus 13 seminar last week, so we right now have 50 iFocus videos on the Hadley website, and you can get to those by going to, of course, www. hadley.edu, and you can follow the videos that Hadley linked that's on the page, or if you want to go Hadley. edu/instructionalvideos and just go straight to the page, you can do that as well. I have a lot


of fun doing those videos. They've all been updated to the latest iOS, and just got the last one updated Friday. Again, thanks Lynn. Those are fun to do, and there will be more and more coming.

AveryDouglas, do you have any good GPS apps?

Audience MemberI would also like to say that I really enjoy those videos from Douglas too. I agree with Lynn, but I also wanted to ask am I the only one who's had problems sending a message since the last iOS update?

DouglasYou've got to make sure you're at 9. 2. 1 with that, because they did have issues with 9. 2, and 9. 2. 1 was supposed to fix that, as well as fix any slow issues. If you're using an iPhone 5 or a 5s, you probably noticed your iPhone slowed down when nine came around. Well, 9. 2. 1 sped it all back up. Matter of fact, my wife's iPhone 5s is faster than my 6s on some things. The software really helped that.

Avery, I had a brain freeze right there. GPS, yeah. Actually, the Apple maps have really really improved. I did an iFocus seminar called walking directions with Siri. It's really good. The Apple maps have improved quite a bit. Also, we have Navagon. That's also had a recent update,


and really fixed all the voiceover stuff in it. It's hit and miss, but Seeing Eye GPS has gotten much, much better. It's kind of an expensive alternative. If you haven't tried the Apple maps lately, just holding down Siri and saying, give me walking directions to McDonald's, or even saying an address, I think you'll be surprised at how accurate the Apple maps have become.

AlanIn addition to that, again I've checked out Google Maps as well. They've really done a lot with their walking directions, as well as they have trains as options. That's another one that's a good one to check out in correlation to maps.

LynnBlindSquare is another one that's really good too.

LarryWe've got time for about one more question, or one more sharing of favorite apps, and then we'll have to start our wrap-up procedure. I'm gonna release the microphone one last time, and see if we have one last question or one last sharing. Hearing none, I'd like to let everyone know that this seminar, like all of our seminars, will be archived on our website, and available for your use anytime, around the clock.

Also, each Hadley seminar is made available as a podcast, which you can download to your computer or mobile device. If today's seminar has you interested in


this or related tech topics, as Lynn mentioned, please check out the seminar archives. Please check out our Hadley's course list and also the Hadley YouTube channel. The panel and I both thank you for your participation. Your questions were outstanding, and I think really added a lot to the value of the seminar.

Hadley values your feedback. Please let us know what you thought about today's seminar, and please give us suggestions for future topics. One way you can do that is by dropping us an email at [email protected]. I'm gonna release the microphone, and I'd like to ask if any of our panel members wish to make any closing comments, that they'll go ahead and jump in there and do that.

DouglasHey Larry, this is Douglas. I love doing the iFocus stuff by myself, but I love even more doing things with my colleagues like this, because it's so much fun to hear and be able to bounce ideas back and forth, not just for the colleagues, but everybody in the room. There were so many great things mentioned today from our participants, and I'm gonna add these to our list that's going to be archived as well. Thank you all for being here. We appreciate all of you. I appreciate all the colleagues, and of course, all of us love Larry. We couldn't keep this going without him. He does a fantastic job as well. Thanks for being here. Take care, and we'll see you next year for the


next App Smackdown seminar. We'll hopefully do this every year.

LynnI just want to join Douglas and thanks to all of you for being with us. It is so enjoyable to get, I've been writing things down throughout the time of things I want to just check out, try myself. Maybe they aren't all things you want, but in this hour, I cannot imagine that each of us in this room haven't picked up two or three, if not a lot more, ideas that we want to try. It's been a pleasure to work with all of you, and to have the audience be here and join us, and Douglas is right. Keep your ears open for e-connect next year, because if all of this is going along as we expect, there will probably be a 2017 version of this. Take care, each of you.

AveryI got something quickly to put out. For anyone that has Comcast, there's a new system up there called X1. It's awesome. They have a remote control, you just mash the button on it, and you talk in the remote control, and it'll change the channel. Also, it has descriptive TV. If you mash the button on there, it will tell you what the program is about. My daughter has one, and I go over there and I play with it all the time. We should all try and get AT&T, and the other cable providers out there, to see if they can do the same thing.

Larry


Thanks for that, Avery. I want to personally thank all of you for taking time and being a part of this seminar. Thank you for your input today. Again, thank you very much for being a part of this today. It was very enjoyable, and look forward to having you at our next seminar. For now, thank you very much.

For more from the iFocus Series, including many other topics of interest to individuals with vision loss, visit the Videos@Hadley page on the Hadley Institute website at www.hadley.edu.


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